PC Tech Thread

tar

New splitter turned up today. works like a dream. identical in every single bloody way to the previous one just slightly different decals. just find it baffling.

My wife's laptop is showing worrying signs of failure (won't run on battery, won't recognise external display, power button is temperamental). I think I'm just going to get here a cheap refurb desktop from eBay (e.g. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/362972496577) . Already have keyboard & screen. Anything particular to look out for, recommended sellers etc? Thanks

I wouldn't buy anything with HDD rather than SSD.

No, after I posted that I realized an SSD would be preferable

I was looking at small form factor PCs and found some of these Lenovo Tiny PCs.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/114047401423

A few questions:

• Has anyone used these?
  
• is anyone duel booting Linux and W10 and in real world how big an SSD would you need assuming no media storage etc?
  
  

Cheers.

I rolled out a few thousand of these as thin clients for a UK gov organisation a while back. Well, an earlier model but pretty much the same thing. It hadn't even crossed my mind that somebody would use as a PC.

What sort of thing would you use one for?

I use one for work (i5 8400T with 8GB ram, win 10, 500GB SSD). It’s pretty impressive as a business machine - basically silent and happily runs 2x 1080 screens.

Edit: Just looked it up and they’re more like £500 with that spec.

Looks like these ones on eBay are the thin client spec with a low energy Celeron chip so perhaps not as impressive as the one you use.

Quite tempted to buy one to use as a syslog server.

What sort of thing would you use one for?

Sorry meant to include that in my post but every time I try and write something my kid does something causing immediate intervention.

In order, use case would be:
1) MS Office PC - word processing, PP, xls.
2) Linux for when not having to do work.
3) either recommissioned at some point as a workshop PC for YouTube videos and googling or 4)
4) Some sort of NAS thing if I every get round to proving my use case RPi budget one.

...although if I'm being honest I probably just want 3) and am trying to refine the sales pitch to my OH.

All of this assumes I can at some point re-access my office and get a screen.

Edit: Just looked it up and they’re more like £500 with that spec.

Yeah. There is that.

That's why I was thinking Linux, but still having W10 dual boot just in case MS Office is needed.

I mean, I'm sure it'll be fine to do those things but it will do them sluuggishly. If you could find something more like the i5 that @Dramatic_Hammer uses you'd be much happier with the outcome I think.

They're rock solid machines. The one in your eBay link is particularly impressive because of the shielding that the heatsink provides. The thing is, these are probably only for sale because a company somewhere has decided that they aren't good enough for business use any more. I.e too slow for "MS Office PC - word processing, PP, xls". Or even too slow to run as a thin client. I'd be a bit wary.

This might be useful as a comparison between that Celeron and the i5. https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-7200U-vs-Intel-Celeron-N3010/m153577vsm195388

There are some 'Tiny' i3s and i5s here:

https://www.tier1online.com/micro-tiny-pcs

I nearly bought one for my Mum recently, but ended up going for a slightly bigger i5 one to save a bit of cash.

To make a more stark comparison, the Cortex A72 in a Raspberry Pi 4 is a quad core 1.5Ghz that is overclockable to about 2Ghz. The Celeron in that computer is a dual core 1 Ghz CPU.

Cheers. I think you've unsold me.

Part of the appeal is undoubtedly the ruggedness/mil-spec cachet, but it's a bit much for something with limited use that still needs an SSD.

Interesting you mention the RPi4 as that is something I am still thinking about for the outhouse. Especially since you said in the other thread you're using the 2GB. We upgraded our screens at work and now have a shitload of old standless small Dell screens. I thought a RPi4 stuck on the back of one of those could be quite a neat solution. It would require me building a workbench first though!

@chez_jay - thanks. Those start to move away from "it's cheap, I'll take a punt as I'm sure it will come in handy sometime" to "do we really need one". Current household is hording; my personal laptop (redundant in lockdown), a borrowed laptop for WFH (now my main one), OH's laptop (needs upgrading), a touch screen laptop that needs a new digitizer, and my ancient Acer netbook.

What we really need to do is fix the touch screen and use it as the family PC, then get my OH a half decent ultrabook and return/throw the rest.

The Dell ones seem slightly better spec. That being said I'd just slightly larger again and get this

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-800-G1-SFF-i5-4590-4th-Gen-Quad-3-3GHz-8GB-500GB-Win-10-Installed-Tested/113904378877?hash=item1a853ae3fd:g:CEwAAOSwoYJedOZ9

not that much bigger, and easily run 2 drives for dual boot if you want and far far more powerful

Just to be clear, I've got both RAM models of pi4 and while the 2gb handles everything I throw at it I haven't actually load tested it and I do wonder if it would be as snappy with a dozen open chromium tabs. It would probably still be fine but I much prefer overspecing and future proofing than saving £20 and regretting it in a year when some new chunky software has come along.

I ran one of these as a dev box for a few years. Worth considering if you dont go with a pi and would prefer something chunkier. It's not milspec but you could smash a car window with it.

https://www.msi.com/Desktop/cubi-n.html

You can often find the older versions for cheap on Ebay. I ran ubuntu 16.10 on my basic Celeron model for compiling QT stuff and it was fine. (Given that speed wasn't a requirement for me at the time). I bet the i5 ones are really snappy.

I'd personally go with a pi4 though.

Opinions on this hp-pavilion please? I have a HP Zbook for work which I like but this is a different series. Will just be used at home for standard family tasks (streaming, kids games, surfing, storage of family photos etc).

My NAS has just died - turns out being dropped on the floor is not great for spinning discs.

Does a cheap, passive cooled 1U NAS exist?

The big appeal is something that can be stuck to the back of a screen. Otherwise I'm just going to end up weighing up all smallish form factors.

TBH Stonehedge has sold me on a RPi4 once lockdown is over and my workbench is finished.

could I fit my EVGA 1080 ti water cooled unit in this?

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/evga-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-sc2-gaming-hybrid-w-icx-11gb-gddr5x-vr-ready-graphics-card-3584-core-1556mh

I'd say yes - there's plenty of room in the case.

Wife is working on it at the moment but happy to provide detailed pics later if you want...

1 rack unit? Or 1 HDD bay?